Thursday, 23 October 2014

It has been a wild and crazy October here so far, what with Canadian Thanksgiving (hello, hosting 12 people for dinner!) and my daughter's Science-themed sixth birthday party. Things are finally starting to feel a but like they're getting back to normal- as long as normal includes four birthday parties (other than my daughter's), oldest's daughter's dance class, swimming lessons for both girls, oldest daughter's sculpture class and additional classes for my six-year-old like her Halloween craft class coming up this weekend. Phew!I HAVE been sewing. Most of it was the same thing over and over...marker roll ups for my daughter's birthday party.

They were all ready and they were a hit!

I also included with each one a Playmobil figure. Apparently at school the Monday after her party, two of my daughter's friends told her "It is good to have a sewing Mommy." They all loved the marker roll ups!And then I got down to business on Sunday afternoon working on straight-line quilting the red and white quilt I'm making my husband's stepmother's mother (Nana) for Christmas. I initially meant to go wider based on my inspiration quilt found on Pinterest, but I started out too close to the seams and decided to just go with it. I'm already on to the binding with this one!

I used a Gutterman variegated thread in red that works beautifully.

And just when I thought I was done making crayon/marker roll ups, a man at work went out of his way to help me out (and made me look good with some co-workers!) so as a thank you I put together a crayon roll up for his youngest and a marker roll up for his eldest (both little girls). He was grateful and I was happy to be able to use my sewing skills to do something nice for him!

The birdhouse print is so adorable.

Also, I put together a mini quilt for another co-worker. It was her birthday, and my small team of six people who work in the same office "birthday bomb" each other by decorating the person's desk, bringing small gifts and celebrating the person on his/her birthday. She has a "J" name and likes teal, so I whipped up this mini quilt for her (in addition to getting her a cool mug and some cookies!). Here it is on display on her bulletin board behind her desk!

I used some leftover Lotta binding and it was perfect! Plus I get to see it when I'm in the office, too, so win-win!

Now I've moved on to a grey and yellow quilt for a neighbour expecting a baby girl later this year. But I have about 1000 more things I want to be working on at any minute so I need to FOCUS.

Thursday, 2 October 2014

Ages ago I ordered a bundle called Glow with the Flow from Pink Castle Fabrics. I loved the quirky, modern look to the black and white dots with the bright, neon pinks, greens and oranges. It has sat in my stash for quite some time. When I found out some of our neighbours are expecting a little girl I thought of this bundle right away. They are young and a bit wild and I thought it would be perfect.I put the neons with some black dots on white and made a pile of HSTs.

Post-pressing, pre-trimming.

And I started to put together a layout that fit my vision. This is what it was starting to look like:

I left that black and white print whole so that you wouldn't lose the graphic nature of it.

But. Then I ran out of black dots on white (but still had lots of colour). And since I am determined to shop my stash as much as possible, I pulled out a white dot on black print and made up another stack of HSTs to go with the first stack. And then I started to play with layout. Below are just a couple of the six or seven layouts I tried.

I tried putting the coloured dots together into a diamond.

I tried alternating the white and black dots and removing the black and white face print.

I went with adding in some neon squares that were whole squares, I tried adding white sashing and then black sashing, I tried putting like-colours together into pinwheels (all orange, all pink), and pinwheels with different colours. In the end...

Abandoned.

...I stacked them all up and abandoned the project. It just. Wasn't. Working. I never do this. I stick through projects to the end! But if it wasn't working for me then I wasn't proud of the work and I didn't feel right giving it as a gift if I didn't love it. So I bit the bullet, texted the mom and asked what her nursery colours are.

Here is Plan B. Can you guess the nursery colours?

There is a whole lot of Lotta (Jansdotter) in this pull, and the fabrics are feminine but not babyish. I just need to select a pattern and then I can roll with Plan B (baby is due in November). I'm feeling this bundle a lot more and maybe one day inspiration will strike with the other pile. In the meantime, I'm okay with moving on!